Riot in Apple Store: Unpaid Homeless People in LA Being Used to Queue for iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C Cause Commotion (VIDEOS & PHOTOS)

A commotion happened on Friday morning in front of an Apple store in Pasadena, California over the non-payment to homeless people who fell in line on behalf of people who want to buy the newly released iPhone 5S or 5C.

The chaos was caused by dozens of homeless people recruited from a downtown homeless shelter to queue and buy in bulk iPhones but were allegedly not paid by the man who hired them, said Pasadena police Lt. Jason Clawson.

The police had to break up fights and calm hundreds of customers who have camped in front of the Apple store to be the first to buy the new iPhones. Dominoe Moody, one of the homeless man who was victimised by the recruiter, said they were fetched by a van from a shelter 10 miles from Pasadena and promised $40 payment for queuing and buying an iPhone. However, after he turned over the gadget to the recruiter, he was whisked away by police.

The unnamed recruiter, who was holding a bag full of iPhones, was eventually taken by police in a cruiser and driven away at 9:30 am, although he was not jailed because he did nothing illegal.

While the crowds, some of whom camped days ahead of the availability of the new iPhone models on store shelves, appear impressive, tech observers are asking if it would translate into actual sales of the device and if it would break Apple's record of selling 5 million units on the first day in 2012.

CNET cited a tally by a Piper Jaffray analyst that the lines in three major U.S. cities, including New York and San Francisco, were longer than in 2012.

Apple is expected to release the numbers by Monday.

British newspaper, The Telegraph, identified 7 key Apple employees who played a major role in developing the new iPhones. The basis of the daily is names found in the patents of the new gadgets.

They are Sir Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of design; Benjamin Pope, the engineer who invented the touch ID fingerprint technology; Mark Zimmer, engineer who is behind the Parallax technology; Geoff Stahl, director of graphic and imaging and one of the co-inventors of the Parallax; Nicholas Merz, senior product designer; Scott Myers, design engineer who worked on the fingerprint technology; and Daniel Jarvis, also an engineer who helped develop the fingerprint technology.